Surfing Through "The Sopranos"

Confession: I've never been a big fan of The Sopranos. (I'll take The Wire and Deadwood any day.) Yes, it's well-acted. But after the first season -- which started off slowly but built to a satisfying finale -- I've never been emotionally involved in the stories. I watched three years without fail and then started just dipping in now and then. Since they're on the last 18 episodes, I got caught up again in watching. Nothing much has changed -- nasty unpleasant people doing nasty unpleasant things. That's not a problem for me -- they're just not interestingly nasty. Putting Tony into a coma was as dumb as Swearengen being incapacitated at the beginning of season two of Deadwood. And the dream sequence was bizarrely ineffective. Tony plays a salesman who gets another guy's briefcase, is "trapped" out of town, meets with some Buddhist monks, sees a beacon off in the distance and then prepares to enter a family reunion. I was certain there would be some emotional payoff for all of this rigmarole. But no. Can't help admiring the work of Gandolfini and Falco but the show itself leaves me cold.